Consumer Guide Album

Trotsky Icepick: Poison Summer [Old Scratch, 1986]
Not a hardcore band (name's too educated) or an art band either (too politically charged). A pop band if anything, firming up a lyricism that wouldn't have sounded out of place at the Fillmore in 1967 with compact structures, foreshortened solos, and a drummer from the (metaphorical) East Bay. A pop band that regards acts of sectarian vengeance as emblematic, an inescapable environment if not topic. B+